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A review by avalinahsbooks
Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better by R. Douglas Fields
3.0
How I read this: Free ebook copy received through NetGalley
I tried so much with this book, and it did have good information - and yet, reading it was such a chore - like reading a textbook. At one point I didn't think I was going to finish (kidding - way more than one point..)
The book has quite an unfortunate beginning which almost made me abandon it. It starts with some history of discovering brain waves, but it goes round and round and back to the same things, so somehow I had a lot of trouble making it past that part. Not only that, but as any medical history, probably, it contains A LOT of gruesome things which I didn't enjoy reading in the least. The part about the history both bored and disgusted me, and it takes up 15% of the book.
However, what follows was a lot more interesting. For example, we all fear electroshock therapy because the media has taught us to - because it was grossly overused and even abused in the past century. But there was stuff about electroshock therapy in this book that was news to me - that it actually worked, although it was a crude, painful way to cure some ailments. Never has the media conveyed to me that it actually did help some people with certain mental illnesses - or rather, illnesses of the brain, as it does seem to be.
Then all the info on neurofeedback - a technique that is quite harmless and pretty accessible, but simply not known to many people. The chapter on that was also pretty interesting, apart from the paragraphs upon paragraphs of the author's stream of consciousness not related to anything in the book, just to illustrate that he's trying not to think but failing during his neurofeedback training session. I mean, we get it, man - trying to calm down, meditate or keep your mind clear is hard - three paragraphs is enough to paint the picture, I don't need several pages of the random thoughts about music, childhood memories, your trips and the types of guitar strings that you were thinking of at the time of the training to convey the idea to me. That part must have been the most tedious thing I've read in YEARS.
The info about brain waves and possible applications of its research - control of artificial limbs, a sort of "tech-assisted telepathy" and many other things - it was all fascinating, and explained and outlined well - and yet, it STILL read like a textbook. Dry and quite hard to read.
Ultimately, this book had a lot of interesting info that I've never heard about before - that radio waves have been successfully used to suggest ideas and behaviors to people and animals, that brainwaves can show what a person is thinking specifically if the patterns for that person have been translated before, or that it is now possible for fully paralyzed people to type at a speaking pace, using only thought and an implant in their brain - all of that is fascinating and quite futuristic, but - but this book also felt like a textbook or a chore sometimes, and it also backtracked and repeated the same things over and over again a lot of times. In places it was tough to read because of every third word being some term I'm not quite familiar with, or just the plain science-speak that was a little bit too dry. I do love scientific books - but perhaps I've read more of them about physics, rather than biology or medicine. So you could say, maybe the book wasn't for me. Maybe it would have been more interesting to a person for whom it this kind of material is more accessible. A lot of books on these topics can be and are made accessible and readable to complete laymen, but sadly, I didn't feel like this one was one of them, despite the quite interesting table of contents and the aim to inform the reader to all of the newest findings in this area.
Triggers:
gruesome experiments with animals and humans described in more detail than I would have liked. Descriptions of invasive procedures. Descriptions of patients conscious and talking while their brain is being operated on. Descriptions of how electroshock therapy was used to "treat" homosexuality (this whole experiment is so awful and incredibly unethical that I don't even want to give you more details about it. Ugh. It is described as a fact of history and it's ethical side isn't really discussed much, but it may be very triggering and it felt just so wrong when I was reading it. If you think it may trigger you, definitely heed this warning.)
I thank the publisher for giving me a free copy of the ebook in exchange to my honest review. This has not affected my opinion.
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I tried so much with this book, and it did have good information - and yet, reading it was such a chore - like reading a textbook. At one point I didn't think I was going to finish (kidding - way more than one point..)
The book has quite an unfortunate beginning which almost made me abandon it. It starts with some history of discovering brain waves, but it goes round and round and back to the same things, so somehow I had a lot of trouble making it past that part. Not only that, but as any medical history, probably, it contains A LOT of gruesome things which I didn't enjoy reading in the least. The part about the history both bored and disgusted me, and it takes up 15% of the book.
However, what follows was a lot more interesting. For example, we all fear electroshock therapy because the media has taught us to - because it was grossly overused and even abused in the past century. But there was stuff about electroshock therapy in this book that was news to me - that it actually worked, although it was a crude, painful way to cure some ailments. Never has the media conveyed to me that it actually did help some people with certain mental illnesses - or rather, illnesses of the brain, as it does seem to be.
Then all the info on neurofeedback - a technique that is quite harmless and pretty accessible, but simply not known to many people. The chapter on that was also pretty interesting, apart from the paragraphs upon paragraphs of the author's stream of consciousness not related to anything in the book, just to illustrate that he's trying not to think but failing during his neurofeedback training session. I mean, we get it, man - trying to calm down, meditate or keep your mind clear is hard - three paragraphs is enough to paint the picture, I don't need several pages of the random thoughts about music, childhood memories, your trips and the types of guitar strings that you were thinking of at the time of the training to convey the idea to me. That part must have been the most tedious thing I've read in YEARS.
The info about brain waves and possible applications of its research - control of artificial limbs, a sort of "tech-assisted telepathy" and many other things - it was all fascinating, and explained and outlined well - and yet, it STILL read like a textbook. Dry and quite hard to read.
Ultimately, this book had a lot of interesting info that I've never heard about before - that radio waves have been successfully used to suggest ideas and behaviors to people and animals, that brainwaves can show what a person is thinking specifically if the patterns for that person have been translated before, or that it is now possible for fully paralyzed people to type at a speaking pace, using only thought and an implant in their brain - all of that is fascinating and quite futuristic, but - but this book also felt like a textbook or a chore sometimes, and it also backtracked and repeated the same things over and over again a lot of times. In places it was tough to read because of every third word being some term I'm not quite familiar with, or just the plain science-speak that was a little bit too dry. I do love scientific books - but perhaps I've read more of them about physics, rather than biology or medicine. So you could say, maybe the book wasn't for me. Maybe it would have been more interesting to a person for whom it this kind of material is more accessible. A lot of books on these topics can be and are made accessible and readable to complete laymen, but sadly, I didn't feel like this one was one of them, despite the quite interesting table of contents and the aim to inform the reader to all of the newest findings in this area.
Triggers:
gruesome experiments with animals and humans described in more detail than I would have liked. Descriptions of invasive procedures. Descriptions of patients conscious and talking while their brain is being operated on. Descriptions of how electroshock therapy was used to "treat" homosexuality (this whole experiment is so awful and incredibly unethical that I don't even want to give you more details about it. Ugh. It is described as a fact of history and it's ethical side isn't really discussed much, but it may be very triggering and it felt just so wrong when I was reading it. If you think it may trigger you, definitely heed this warning.)
I thank the publisher for giving me a free copy of the ebook in exchange to my honest review. This has not affected my opinion.
Book Blog | Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter